Sustainable Gardening Newsletter July '09

GardenRant edition.  The whole newsletter is available here.

In the News

• New evidence that ingredients in Roundup are hurting humans.  Read about this big news in Scientific American.
  
• Here's news that rooftop farms are taking off in New York City, and that veg gardens are considered desirable amenities for suburban subdivisions.  Lordy, it's a new world.
  
• Yielding to factual evidence - that only about 3 perfect of rainwater falling on houses reaches streams - Colorado is relaxing its strict prohibition on the collecting of rainwater.  This story in the New York Times shows what a nonsensical mishmash water laws in the West still are, though.
  
• Purdue has promising news - that its new hybrid of the American chestnut tree might just revive the almost-extinct species AND sequester a whole lotta carbon, too (because they grow so much faster than other hardwood trees).  The new hybrids have the blight-resistance of Chinese chestnuts, while retaining 94% American genes (somehow).  Source: Science Daily. 

Found on the Web

• On Treehugger, a good comparison of drip irrigation with xeriscaping. 
  
• Plantwerkz is dedicated to architecturally beautiful plants, defined as plants that are visually aesthetic, that "command attention to themselves, causing all background to fade away in their presence."  Yum!

On the Sustainable Gardening Blog

• The Dance of Groundcovers shows the current state of a mix of thymes, Creeping Jenny, clovers, sedums, strawberries and more, and how easily swayed I really am by public opinion.
• If I lived in LA I'd copy Shirley Bovshow's garden shows off a super-sustainable garden for Southern California that even includes lots of edibles.  I want to live there!
• I can't believe I spent good money on a weed I've hated for decades - the trumpet vine confesses my latest gardening mistake.  As my mom used to say, "Live and learn."  (Okay, but when's that going to start?)

My So-Called Second Career

I'm busy writing an actual magazine piece - for Fine Gardening, my old fave.  It'll cover plants that can be used to replace lawns - yay!  This topic's near and dear to me and I got a chance to tackle it at the American Hort Society recently - and got great suggestions from Brent and Becky Heath, and a very knowledgeable horticulturist who works there.  Seems only natural to do a book on the subject, right?

And some of you will be amused to know that I've finally given in to social pressure and the advice of lots of smart people and have begun tweeting.  Sure, I tried once before and gave up but this time I've installed the much-recommended Tweetdeck, which promises to make it all soooo easy.  (More will be revealed.)  My Twitter name is GardenerSusan.

Here's the thing, though.  I'm DO write or contribute to 8 blogs and websites, so I may still fail at this social networking thing.  (Unless I give in to my lust and get an iPhone.  Seeing Carol Michel wield hers planted a seed that wants to grow!)

Comments

[Raoul]

great newsletter! Please let us know if you join twitter! http://www.twitter.com/tankdepot

[greg draiss]

SAVE THE LAWNS: Place a beached whale on your lawn so no one can remove your turf!!!

the TROLL

[Garden Gopher]

Lots of people are starting to realize that it is really no more work to maintain that garden patch of vegetables than it is maintain that plush plot of grass.

[Steve Cissel]

Inside scoop:

An iPhone app called 'GardenPilot' is launching at the IGC 2009 show.

It is a plant search database app.
GardenPilot.com for more info.

Steve

[Tibs]

In reply to garden gopher: My garden patch of vegetables is way way way more work than m plot of grass. Notice I left out the adgetive "plush". This is not a complaint. I love my vegetable garden and working in it. But I water it with rain water from my two rain barrels. Which means I schlep water in a watering can. The grass never gets watered. I hand weed the veggies, the grass, never (except thistles). I pour over garden catalogues to get the right seeds, I visit a variety of nursuries to get the perfect veggie plants. I tie up tomatos, I pick japanese beetles off the greenbeens. I can/freeze the veggies. I remove the spent veggie plants and compost them. I spread compost on the garden. I spade up the garden (to incorporate the composte). The grass? gets mowed once a week, sometimes every two weeks if it is very dry. Gets edged couple times during the summer. Never any chemicals dumped on it for weed/feed. Though I am thinking of spreading a thin layer of compost this fall. And my varieties of ground cover I have? Major hand weeding until it filled in.

And when I am too frail to do my gardening I know it will be easy and inexpensive to hire a neighbor kid to mow and edge. Not so easy or affordable to hire someone to do the veggie garden. Hopefully I will never be that frail.

[Jody]

I can't imagine anybody *planting* creeping jenny anywhere. I just got done ripping it out along with a lot of other plants -- weed chemotherapy -- you take some good out with the bad. I like the alt-lawn a lot, but not the creeping j. ugh.

Jody

[Margaret]

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Margaret

http://howtomakecompost.info

[Intisar Munir]

Saw the video showing Michelle Obama and the children from DCPS.
The best part of the video was the wonder of the children when they took the sweet potatoes from the earth.
What a face!
I love it.
Go Michelle...keep on doing it.

Intisar Munir